


No Regrets

by ImperiusRex



Category: Invaders (Marvel), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas Party, Drinking, Family Feels, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing in the Rain, Lost Love, M/M, Morning After, Snow, Team as Family, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 14:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperiusRex/pseuds/ImperiusRex
Summary: Toro Raymond struggles to adjust to life in the present after being brought back from the dead by Bucky.[This fic was created for the 2019 summer Invaders Fanworks Fest]





	No Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> [Set just after Invaders/Avengers(2008), The Torch (2009), and just before Invaders Now(2010). Flashbacks are set during Winter Soldier: Winter Kills (2007) flashback events]

**Winter 1944**

_It’s a party, you’re supposed to have fun at a party, but then why did Bucky look like he just swallowed a lemon? His bitter expression was clear from across the room. Toro would look over his shoulder while dancing with his girl and see Bucky watching the crowd with a unhappy expression when he thought no one was looking, he turned on his smile when anyone came by so they didn’t bother him. Toro goes back to dancing._

_She had red hair… and soft hands. Her lips were soft too. Toro remembered the blush he felt when he kissed her in a dark corner under the mistletoe away from the celebration, he was about to leave to find Bucky whom he had seen earlier with Steve before losing track of him, Steve had gone home a long time ago giving Toro a small wave. The red head giggled after she kissed him and in an airy voice said, “Don’t die,” before flouncing off back to the party. Toro grinned. He would definitely try not to die; maybe he should have gotten her name. _

_Death could come to anyone, but to Toro and Bucky, they were invincible after all. Two teens in the middle of the war, but surrounded by their older friends who would lay down their lives to protect them. Toro believed in them, in Steve and Jim, yes even in Namor. That they would make it out of the war. They were heroes, super men; no one could tear this team apart. _

**Present**

Toro, now an adult, snorts at the fleeting memory, he couldn’t even remember the girls name… he knocks back another drink. Late night in New York, there was hardly anyone here now, just him and the bar tender who gave him a look every now and then, waiting to see him wobbling off his stool so she could cut him off and kick him out into the streets.

“Another whatever you call this, cause it ain’t whiskey.”

She rolls her eyes at him and pours him another shot; he stares into the cool amber liquid, watching the lights from the passing patrol car that shone in the window play upon it. Red and blue, like a shield he once knew…

“Toro. I’ve been looking for you!” Bucky plops himself down onto the stool next to his, his brown coat concealing the uniform he wore, a bit of red and blue peeked out of the part where it was slightly open. He had taken on his mentor’s role, and calling Bucky “Captain” now sounded weird on Toro’s tongue.

“Drinking without me? Feels different now huh? Back in the war Steve didn’t like that, and wouldn’t let me drink. _‘A man can go to war but not drink’_ I remember telling him…” Bucky trails off and Toro knows it’s because he missed the man who was like a father to him. Bucky signals the bartender and places his order, and there is a round of drinks brought to them. “Used to sneak it anyways. Harder to actually get drunk these days… the whole enhancement thing. Still Vodka usually does the trick.”

Bucky slides a glass over to Toro and picks up his own and they raise their glasses, to the past, to the friends who weren’t there now, and drink. It burns his throat and if Toro wanted to be showy and scare the bartender with his old circus act tricks he would have done his fire breathing routine. “You ok?”

He isn’t.

“Just peachy keen Buck.”

Lying to his friend always made his stomach twist, he grimaces.

Bucky sees that. He sighs and runs a hand through dark brown wavy hair. The bar, a seedy hole in the wall not for tourists, had been standing there since the early 20’s back when prohibition had been in effect, and it had survived but unlike other prohibition bars this wasn’t well kept with the allure of history, but it was old, like Toro and Bucky. Toro watches his friend out of the corner of his eye, he looked so different. Older yes, his boyish face was harder now, a strong jaw line and a nose that looked like it might have been broken a few times and set back into place. His brown hair was short, and his brown eyes looked tired. There wasn’t much left from that army brat that used to live among the soldiers and fetch them stuff, but there was still something there that was familiar when Bucky opened his fat trap and didn’t shut up. Toro was glad at least that hadn’t changed. Bucky looks down into his own glass and takes a breath.

“Listen buddy, that feeling you’re feeling? I’ve been there. Just when I think I’m getting used to it, it hits me that I’m not and things will never be as they were-”

Toro had this talk before, the last time when he was watching his former wife who was now happily married with kids, and it struck him as so unfair that it wasn’t his family, that she thought he was dead. Anne meant so much to him, she and he… they were in love and he had only her when the war was done and the Invaders were gone. It made him sick when he would think about it, so he had to drink a bit, just to push his mind past it. Bucky was still talking and Toro didn’t want a pep talk.

“God save me from your yapping. You trying to convince me things will be alright… is that for my benefit or yours, Buck?”

He pulls out his wallet and Toro tossed down enough to cover the tab, which was still too much, money didn’t buy as much as it used to. He really can’t sit here for another moment, it seemed like Bucky wanted to be sure he was happy or something, did he feel guilty for bringing Toro back from the dead? Toro didn’t blame him, he wasn’t happy with him either in the beginning when it finally dawned on him that he couldn’t just to back and pick up his life like no time had passed. Now? Toro didn’t know what to feel. The rain outside was a drizzle but it was picking up, and the minute he gets outside Toro flames on, he doesn’t care that it looks like the rain might start falling harder at any minute from dark heavy clouds, he just needs to fly. Toro the Flaming Kid, but he wasn’t a kid anymore, soars high above the New York skyline and doesn’t hear his oldest friend call out for him after he followed him outside. He flies, and passes other heroes who fly going in different directions, probably off to fight crime or something, one of them has huge wings and looks like an angel, he had blonde hair and was speaking into a cell phone nearly colliding with Toro if Toro hadn’t pulled up.

“Hey! I got the right of way, freaking tourists, if you’re going to be in New York then at least watch where you’re flying!” Angel flies off putting his phone back to his ear, “No Logan, I wasn’t talking to you!”

Toro ignores him, his thoughts on the past, as he cuts a blazing trail through the night time sky.

_He had gone looking for Bucky and found him outside, off by himself, taking a swing of a bottle and not caring that the snow was falling on his head as he walks. Toro jogs up to him as he goes around the side of the building where the dance was still going on long after midnight. It was Christmas. Everyone except Bucky was having a good time._

_“Hey Buck! Where’d you go off to, weren’t you gonna ask someone to dance or should I keep all the girls for myself?” Toro grinned as he fell into step with his friend._

_“Nah, didn’t want to step on your toes, just taking a walk.”_

_“Heading back to HQ?”_

_“Later, you should go back, have fun with the red head.”_

_Toro was a bit hurt, was Bucky trying to get rid of him? He keeps pace but doesn’t talk wondering what he did wrong; maybe Bucky really had wanted to dance with the girl?_

_“Nah… she’s off dancing with someone else… I did get a kiss though.” Toro says trying to break the quiet. He smiles slyly and wants for Bucky’s reaction. It isn’t what he expected. Maybe he thought Bucky would slap him on the back or punch his shoulder or something but Bucky’s face had some sorta emotion that Toro didn’t understand. Like he was happy but also sad? Toro gets self conscious, he feels his hands get clammy and his stomach has butterflies… he didn’t have a crush on Bucky… boys don’t get crushes on boys... do they? He saw sometimes how Namor would look at Jim when he thought no one was looking. He figured it was an Atlantean thing. Besides with how much Bucky talked about girls, it was better not to think about how it would have felt if he was the one who kissed Toro in a dark corner of a dance hall._

_After a minute Bucky seems to snap back into himself, “Aw man, that’s pretty swell Toro; I knew you could do it! Here.” Bucky hands him the bottle, “Celebrate, it is Christmas after all.”_

_Toro takes it, he knows Jim will think it’s wrong and he would worry Toro would come to trouble if he were to drink. The swig he takes almost makes him cough. Bucky wallops his back a few times and Toro breathes easier. “Hey now don’t kill me before the war does!” _

_Bucky chuckles, “The thanks I get for saving your life.” The pair continues to walk on the snowy streets of London. Leaving a trail of footprints in the newly fallen snow_

_“Hey Toro… ever get this sick feeling in the pit of your guts and it makes you want to throw up? Like you think about stuff and it just dawns on you that maybe you don’t have as much control as you think you do? And you just wanna hide under a table or something until things make sense?”_

_Toro thinks for a bit, he wanted to make a joke about it but Bucky didn’t sound like he was joking, his words had been slightly slurred. It wasn’t often that Bucky was serious but Toro felt he was now. _

_Snow crunched beneath their feet, the city had that hushed sound that usually came after a snowfall, where everything was absorbed by the thick white layer of snow on the ground. It made Toro feel like they were the only two people in the world, walking the bombed out streets alone, with the occasional glow of a streetlamp to light their way. Some of the houses that they passed were boarded up, who knows what had happened to their owners… fled to safer places, off on the front lines, or dead. Evidence of the ongoing war was everywhere, and it had almost seemed like a ghost town, they hadn’t passed anyone else meanwhile the eerie sound of faraway holiday music floated through the streets. Bucky is swaying a bit and Toro thinks he had started drinking at the party before leaving. He watches in case he has to help steady him as they cross the bridge that runs over the Thames River._

_“I don’t… but after my parents died… I wanted to hide. I wanted to crawl into my own bed at night and burrow my head under my blanket and I would wish that when I took the covers off in the morning… that they would be there…”_

_He thinks back to the first night he spent at Jim’s house, Jim was a cop and part time hero, he had taken Toro in, and it had been awkward, Jim didn’t know anything about being a father, and Toro wanted his parents. _

_***** _

_Hammond had walked in one night to check on Toro just after he got off duty and was startled to see him sobbing into his pillow._

_“I’m sorry; I don’t know what to do?” Jim’s sad face doesn’t help._

_Toro burrowed deeper in his blankets, “**Nothing**, unless you can raise the dead, you can’t do nothin’ so get **out**!” _

_Jim left him, and Toro cried himself to sleep, but when he woke up after a few hours Toro found a wooden box sitting on his bedside table. Inside was trinkets, stuff from his house, a picture of his parents and him, and a few other belongings. Jim was sitting on the edge of his bed with his back turned to Toro, in the darkness Toro could have mistaken him for a mannequin. “I don’t know what to do… but I want to learn Toro. I want to be there for you when you need me, I can’t replace your mom and dad, but seeing you sad makes me sad. It’s funny, I felt a lot of things before, but sad wasn’t one of them… if you want to find new parents, I won’t stop you. I can teach you how to control the fire and you can go, if you want.” _

_Toro blinks, he thought he couldn’t cry anymore after drenching his pillows earlier, but tears slipped down his cheeks. He gulps, feeling a lump in his throat. “Thanks… for the box.” He takes a breath. “I think I want to stay Jim, we’re both alone, so why should we have to be alone and apart?”_

_ Jim turns to look at him. “I’ll do my best Toro, I promise.” His earnest face makes Toro smile._

_“I’m not the best of kids… sorry in advance I guess.” Toro puts the picture of his parents on his table and gets out of bed to shove the box under his bed. “If you don’t mind me setting things on fire and calling you Pappy then I guess we can try to be a family.”_

_Jim furrows his brows, “Pappy?”_

_“It’s like Papi, which is Spanish for father, my mother taught me some of her language, she met my dad in Mexico you know, when Horton sent him there to interview her to come to the U.S. and work in his lab.”_

_Jim smiles, “Yeah… I’d like that.” He stands up and ruffles Toro’s hair, Toro hugs his waist and Jim is startled, hugs weren’t something he was used to, after a minute he hugs back._

*****

_Now Toro realizes that he lost track of time while he was thinking and that Bucky had stopped, he moves to sit. Toro joins him._

_They sit side by side on the Tower Bridge, halfway across; their legs dangling over open water and watch the lone solitary night barge as it moves towards them. They’re close enough together that Toro turns up his body temperature a bit, so that way Bucky’s teeth don’t chatter as the wind stings their faces._

_“Toro… you’re always so warm.”_

_“Hmm?” _

_Toro turns his face away from watching the rippling water to Bucky and feels cold lips press against his as Bucky kisses him gently. Different from the red head, softer somehow, and Toro wasn’t expecting that. He decides he likes it. When it’s over and Bucky pulls back his face, which had turned a faint shade of red, they avoid each other’s eyes, and sit holding hands until the sun rises. They won’t speak of it ever again; there was never any time after, the war kept them busy. Even if they had talked Toro didn’t know what he would say, and after Bucky died, Toro buries those feelings deep._

Toro sits on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, staring out over the water, the rains falls in buckets, he had to land or risk falling to the ground from hundreds of feet in the air. He doesn’t mind the rain, just raises his inner body temperature so his core stays warm enough to not let him feel the chill.

“It would be **nice** if you came down before we both freeze to death ya know,” Bucky has to raise his voice to be heard over the rainfall. Bucky plops down next to him, on his left side, so that Bucky’s normal arm was next to him and his metal one wasn’t. Toro noticed that Bucky did that a lot, unconsciously; the former Winter Soldier would position himself in that way. It didn’t make Toro feel better, in fact it just made him wonder what exactly Bucky went through, his friend never did give him all the details. “I know Steve had to sleep for a bit in the ice but I hope not every captain America has to freeze their balls off as some kind of tradition.”

Bucky was trying to lighten Toro’s mood. Falling back on his jokes and Toro stares him. The rain makes Bucky’s brown hair darker.

“How’d you get up here?”

“Please, this bridge is cakewalk compared to other stuff I’ve done.”

He flashes Toro a smile, brown eyes anxious. Toro gives him a grin back, his own black hair dripping water into his eyes.

“Sorry Buck, I just needed to get some space.”

“Yeah… sorry if pushed too hard.”

“You’re feeling guilty.”

“Guilty for making you fly away?”

Toro won’t let Bucky’s jokes distract him, this had been decades waiting and it was time to face those old fleeting feelings. It’s nerve wracking.

“You feel guilty for bringing me back to life, and seeing how unhappy I am. It’s not your fault I’m unhappy.”

Lightening crackles across the sky. Maybe being on a top of a tall bridge in the middle of the storm was a stupid idea, but then again Bucky and Toro never claimed to be immune to stupid ideas.

“Isn’t it?” Bucky’s voice is bitter, “I just thought… there’s a lot in my life I regret,” Thunder sounds loudly, his voice strains to be heard over the storm, “but not being there for you… that’s the biggest one Toro. I let you down. I failed you!”

Toro shakes his head and grabs Bucky’s shoulder shaking it lightly, ignoring the water drenching their clothes, practically yelling now to be heard, “You didn’t! I know what I said when we were brought to the future, I know you wouldn’t have let me die if you could have stopped it, and you brought me back.” Toro leans in closer, “I’m just in a mood, I’m drifting lost in the storm, and I got nothing right now except you. Jim’s doing his thing, Namor’s off in the ocean talking to fish or something, Steve… he’s **gone**! We both have _regrets_ Buck, and we just gotta find a way to move on.”

Toro can’t be sure, but he thinks Bucky might be crying, it’s hard to tell what’s rain and what isn’t. Bucky’s voice is unsteady.

“Oh yeah? What regrets do you have?”

“_This_.”

Toro leans in and kisses Bucky, one hand cupping his cheek the other in Bucky’s hair, rain water on the soldier’s lips evaporated when Toro’s fire warm lips connected. In the night, in the storm, in the howling winds and with the sound of thunder in their ears, two men continued a moment that was taken from them by war and death.

*****

The next morning, the storm moves on and the sound of raindrops on the windows of Barnes’s apartment ceases and in Bucky’s bed, Toro buries himself under heavy blankets. He wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and pulls him close. He doesn’t let Bucky try to move his metal arm out of the way, showing him that Toro loves him, all of him. He throws the blanket over both of their heads and under it Bucky blinks sleepily at him, voice scratchy and rough, “No regrets?”

Toro smiles and presses his forehead to Bucky’s, “_None_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this fic ended at 1k but while editing Toro just had too much to say, so I kept adding more stuff also I wanted to write in more of Bucky's pov but Toro was persistent and the interlude with Jim was totally unscripted. I had no intention of adding Jim in this fic at all to be honest. Also I headcanon Toro as being Mexican-American because I like to think that Toro's mom is a smart Mexican scientist who moved to the states after falling for Toro's dad, to work with him and Professor Horton.
> 
> My chosen prompt was: Blanket
> 
> Comments and Kudos are appreciated!


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